African Americans arrived with the first ships in 1670, and were the majority of South Carolina’s population, as slaves, from about 1708 to the eve of the Revolutionary War. When the 1820 U.S. Census was conducted, African Americans were again in the majority, a position they retained until the 1920s. They brought many important skills with them to South Carolina; as agriculturists, herdsmen, and watermen, they made a significant contribution to the planter society of South Carolina.

Researchers cannot afford to overlook the Voter Registration Lists of 1867 and 1868. African Americans in South Carolina gained temporary control of the state through their voting majority; many recently freed slaves made their first appearance in the Voter Registration Lists.

Lists of free persons of color, slave lists, plantation records, personal and family records, bills of sale, account books, indentures, and a variety of similar records attest to African Americans in South Carolina. The South Carolina Department of Archives and History, College of Charleston, South Carolina Historical Society, University of South Carolina, and Winthrop College have important collections of these types of records and manuscripts. Not every South Carolina district or county created or preserved each type of record listed above. In fact, the number of local records attesting to a specific slave is small when compared with those available for people who were not enslaved. The best sources of information about slaves are district (county) estate and property records. See James Rose and Alice Eichholz, Black Genesis (1978; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2003).

Kenneth M. Stampp, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley offers one of the best discussions of ante-bellum plantation records as the introduction to “Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War,” Series J: Selections from the Southern Historical Collections, Part 3: South Carolina, available online at www.lexisnexis.com/academic/guides/southern_hist/plantations/plantj3.asp.